Talk:Jacques Schnee/@comment-1446360-20200113005255/@comment-35434444-20200113172842
Or you could just throw the character in the trash and forget about them. A character is a tool, not a person. I want Jacques to receive some form of acknowledgement and mercy, but not for his sake per se. Let's go back to the story's point of departure. The Gods. The God of Light's brother is the God of Darkness. He is evil incarnate. He is destruction. He is vengeful. He is corruptive His very existence entails nothing but undermining and opposing the good and the creative. Jacques may resemble his cowardly and petty nature, but the accumulated pain he has caused doesn't compare to a single rancid toenail clipping of this prince of despair who once erased all of humanity. How does the God of Light respond to this? Something resembling agape; the highest form of unconditional divine love. It seems a little trite and stupid. Forgiving one's enemies just sounds like a great way to get stabbed in the back and eaten by snakes and if there is anyone he can be trusted not to find redemption, it's the lowest of the lowly in ourselves. We see this platitude in Christianity, but really is it unpackaged in the proper way from the pulpit “'You' have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” Matthew 5:43-45 Notice that the passage doesn't implore anyone to love their enemies in the hopes of changing their ways but specifically so that they can imitate the nature of god who is substantially identified with forgiveness. This is what it means to, "trust in love," as the title song suggests. The reason evil is to be tolerated up to a certain point is that good cannot exist without it. Any effort that tries to extricate the evil outright necessarily establishes a worse tyranny than the one it uproots and only harms the good it was supposed to protect and promote. There is a hypocrisy concealed in all do-goodery. Because how will you do away with evil of doing harm to evil? It folds back on itself and vanishes in a puff of logic. It isn't about being stupid good alignment. It isn't about being a pacifist, for the striking down of evil is itself a form of evil that has the right to exist within the balance of nature. It isn't about promoting good, because that only deepens the evil by contrast. What it is comes down to recognizing who we really are. You can't uproot evil because it's you. You can't destroy destructiveness because that itself would be an act of destruction. The God of Light is above such ignorance because he knows that the God of Darkness is really his own obverse side and there is no means of getting rid of it either by reform or expulsion. So he sees it for what it is. If we did the same a curious transformation would take place... but now I'm really getting off the metaphysical deep end. I've been calling for Jacques to have a more relatable motivation than the one he has and cited the family legacy as a plausible option, but that's just because I think it's absences is conspicuous and nonsensical. A redemption arc would miss the point. I think he should be offered some faint attempt at redemption, but still foul it up.